Enewsletter

Notes
from Vegan Outreach

Activist
Profile: Rick Hershey

Our series of activist
profiles continues with Rick Hershey. Since
we started keeping track, Rick has handed booklets
to over
130,000 individuals!

Here’s an excerpt:

What
was your most positive leafleting experience?

When I reached my
100,000th booklet last April. Other positive experiences
include the many people I have reached out to
who later tell me they have become vegetarian
as a result of my influence, or even simply
that they have reduced their meat consumption.

As a Washington
U freshman, I took an ethics course in the Philosophy
department, “Present Moral Problems.”
I wrote my paper on the ethics of vegetarianism.
However, this was before Peter Singer’s book
Animal Liberation, and the grader wrote
that he thought the subject of my paper was
a joke. When leafleting there recently, a vegetarian
freshman told me he was taking that very same
course, taught currently by the son of my professor,
and now animal rights is a regular component
of the course. That, too, was one of my better
leafleting experiences!

Notes
from Our Members

Riley
Law spreads sunshine and compassion throughout
Chicago.

Thanks for your outreach program
about lessening meat consumption.
My sister is vegetarian, but I’ve never had
the guts to take the plunge, especially while
in college, and pretty much just eat whatever
I can get.
I am appalled
at the way animals are treated on modern farms,
and really appreciate the attitude of your organization
that simply lessening meat consumption still
helps.
Other groups,
with attitudes of all-or-nothing, hemp-wearing
vegan or sadistic burger-eating monster, are
polarizing and drive people away from a worthwhile
cause. Thank you for offering reasonable goals!—MS, 10/5/10

Cassandra, Marguerite, and I reached
958 students at SUNY New Paltz today. As people
walked past me after receiving leaflets from
Cassandra or Marguerite, it was common for me
to hear them discussing the
leaflet. I overheard tons of conversations all
day, from “That’s going to make me vegetarian”
to “This is so sad – did you read
it?” It’s so great to get people talking
to each other about this! —Eileen Botti, 9/2/10

Jack Norris makes another connection for the animals!

Great leafleting at City College
of San Francisco with Jack (right)
today! Quite a few “Good for you!”
and “Thanks for handing this out!”
type comments. One young lady said her sister
went veg after receiving an Even If You
Like Meat booklet. I saw one guy walking
and reading Even If three different
times. The third time I asked him what he thought
about the material and he said he was really
shocked. He said one of his teachers had been
urging the class to boycott fast food because
of how badly animals are treated but he didn’t
realize the problem was so big. He accepted
a Guide and told me he would definitely
be working towards a more veg diet. —Brian Grupe, 9/1/10

I wasn’t really in
the mood for leafleting the University of Georgia
today, but talked myself into it. I’m sure glad
I did, as it turned out to be a great day! The
acceptance rate was around 90%. In addition
to leafleting, I had some good conversations,
met quite a few vegetarians, and also was able
to direct several interested students over to
our table to learn more.—Eric Griffith, 9/1/10

After
receiving a booklet from Nikki Benoit, a
student at California State, Los Angeles
studies the formerly hidden truth.

A slow
but very worthwhile day at Miami-Dade
College Homestead campus today. A lot of the
students I interacted with seemed really open
minded; I saw many students reading their booklet
intently! After a conversation, one couple
said they would consider going veg. Another
great moment came when a Latino couple I’d given
a booklet to earlier came back. Although they
didn’t speak a word of English, they had looked
through the booklet closely and were now curious
to know more about it. We had a great conversation
and I was impressed that, with all the benefits
of a vegan diet I’d discussed with them, they
totally stayed focused on the main point –
that going veg is the only way to do the best
thing for the animals themselves! Weird to me,
but I almost seemed to be more convincing about
the merits of being vegan in Spanish than I
normally am in my own language! —Yuri Mitzkewich, 10/6/10

At the
University of New Hampshire, Durham,
one student who recently went veg after seeing
Food, Inc. was very grateful for a Guide to help with
her new way of eating. A young man was looking through a leaflet and
it prompted him to tell his friend about the Meatrix.
A student who said he couldn’t go vegan was
impressed with the idea of simply reducing animal-product consumption: “I
could do that.”—Lana Smithson, 8/30/10

Little
did this CSU Northridge student know, Stewart
Solomon was about to change his life!

At Northeastern
Illinois University, one young
woman asked if it was hard knowing that a lot
of people won’t change. I told her that a good
many people do, in fact, change, and that even
if not everyone comes around to our side, the
change we create is very real to those we impact.
Big change usually
starts modestly and grows. Paraphrasing Howard
Zinn, if we do get involved in activism,
there is a decent chance we can help bring about
needed change. If we don’t do this, there is
no chance we will bring about such change. And
when adding the fact that working for a cause
greater than ourselves can bring about an exciting,
life-affirming existence, there is only one
feasible option for those looking to make an
impact in the world – to get involved.—Jon Camp, 9/1/10

Vegan
Outreach is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization
dedicated to reducing the suffering of
farmed animals by promoting informed,
ethical eating.